Dorfman: Rutgers is more Ivy League than Big Ten

(Left to right) Big Ten commissioner James Delany, Rutgers Athletic Director Tim Pernetti and Rutgers president Robert Barchi as the school announces it is leaving the Big East for the Big Ten.Patti Sapone/The Star-Ledger

Remembrances of things past:

So Rutgers is now a member of the Big Ten, and the fiscal benefit of its alignment with the heavyweights of college football cannot be overestimated.

But there is a powerful irony here that may be hidden when the TV money comes pouring in.

Some years ago, there was bitter opposition on campus to Rutgers’ expansion before the Big Ten was even a thought. It came from the faculty, a strong, organized unit of professors, who demanded a review of all Rutgers sports, and from a large vocal group of students.

They got my support, too, because I felt Rutgers had more Ivy League than Big East in it. Fact is, the students posted the columns on an inner college wall to back their case.

I’m sure resentment still sizzles, if quietly, among the profs, and if it catches fire again, it will among the students.

Meanwhile, the Ivy League and most any others like it in this country remain sworn to the notion that the primary function of a college is still education, not a free seat in the classroom or a two-year pathway to the NFL.

DAD WAS RIGHT

Now, I did this piece on Columbia knocking off Stanford, 7-0, in the 1934 Rose Bowl, and opened the flood gates to reader memories. Memory Lane is one crowded highway.

For Catherine O’Shea of Flemington, it was special. The column, she claims, told her she owed her late dad a big apology. When he turned 87, she says, he was pretty much out of it, but one day he told her of Columbia’s victory, and she didn’t believe him. Well, her dad died last year at 98, and “along comes your column about the Columbia victory I didn’t believe. Thank you for giving me back my daddy.”

Daddy O’Shea, it seems, also took some great memories of his own with him. His paternal grandfather, George Hall Large, played at Rutgers, suffered the first recorded college football injury and was the last man standing from the Rutgers and Princeton squads that played the first intercollegiate football game in November 1869.

At the same time, Catherine relates, her dad’s other grandfather, Charles T. Page, was playing baseball for a Rockford, Ill., team that knocked off the touring Washington Senators in Chicago. The Rockford pitcher was Grandpa’s best friend, a fellow named Albert Spalding.

As for Catherine’s dad, he wound up playing first base for Columbia.

An unforgettable moment was meeting Lou Gehrig and asking the great Yankee for any pointers. “Well, son,” Gehrig drawled, “I’d recommend you boys score more runs than the other team.”

BACK IN THE DAY

Hey, hails Herb Goldberg of Clinton, “don’t forget coach Andy Kerr’s 1934 Colgate football team: unbeaten, untied, un-scored upon and uninvited to the 1934 Rose Bowl. But your piece on Columbia getting the Rose Bowl was a wonderful trip into history. Before that, I never knew the history of the 1934 game.

“I share your opinion against Rutgers going big time, and your love of the game played by real amateurs. We played them every year when I was at Lehigh, and I was at Easton last Saturday for the 148th Lehigh-Lafayette, the most-played series in college football. It was the 52nd game I have seen.”

Al McIntosh of Manchester chips in with, “You have no idea how you stir up memories in the mind of this 89-year-old kid. I was living in Tenafly when a friend’s father was a professor at Columbia, and he took us to Baker Field to see Lou Little’s Lions. Please keep up the good work.”

TOUGH TALK

You have to wonder what impact the opinions of NFL veterans have on the league’s ownerships. The one that still resonates with me is Harry Carson’s, on CBS.

The former Giants’ linebacker: “From a physical risk standpoint, I knew that you could get hurt, and I assumed that risk. But from a neurological risk standpoint, I didn’t know. So knowing what I know now, I never would have played football.”

But the one that really spells it out is what linebacker Scott Fujita told the AP:

“For me, the issue of player health and safety is personal. For the league and commissioner, it’s about perception and liability. The commissioner says he is disappointed in me. Truth is, I’m disappointed in him. His positions on player health and safety have been inconsistent at best. He failed to acknowledge a link between concussions and brain disease. He pushed for an 18-game regular season, committed to a full season of Thursday night games, has continually challenged players’ rights to workmen’s compensation claims and employed incompetent officials for the start of the 2012 season. His actions or lack thereof are by the league’s own definition conduct detrimental.”

And the beat goes on.

Quotation

“If you have a contented mind, you have enough to enjoy life with.” — Plautus